


the widows of Ashur

by OAbsalom



Category: Good Omens, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Between Episodes 1 & 2, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant Angst, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Discord: O Lord Heal This Server, Episode: s01e01 In the Beginning, Episode: s01e02 The Book, First Time, Forbidden Love, Hurt, Hurt With Hope, Love Confessions, Oral Sex, Post-Welcome to the End Times, Tender Crowley (Good Omens), Tender Sex, Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 03:15:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21989107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/pseuds/OAbsalom
Summary: "Wejust have three days now,” the final word leaving him with a pitiful sound that made his friend turn round again to look in his eyes. “I can’t imagine a way round it. Can’t think of anything. You’ll never talk to me again.” Crowley’s voice caught in his throat. “’ll never hear your voice again.”He reached out his hand and rested it lightly against Aziraphale’s cheek, brushing it with his thumb lighter than a feather. His skin was a smooth velvet like he’d always imagined it would be.“‘S not about the plan anymore, Angel! It's about the time we have left. I can’t– I just can’t-" He leaned to chase and catch the angel’s bounding gaze, bringing it back around to him. “Without you, I’ll never belong again.” He leaned in slowly. When their lips brushed slightly, he paused, feeling his friend’s breath on him, warm and quick. Would this small moment carry him through an eternity in Hell? He pressed their lips together and couldn’t keep a slight whimper from the back of his throat.[[An attempt to canon-compliantly fill in the one confirmed night Crowley stayed over at the bookshop, between "Welcome to the End Times" in episode 1 and the arrival of Gabriel and Sandalphon in episode 2.]]
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 108
Collections: Good Omens (Complete works), O Lord Heal This Gift Exchange





	the widows of Ashur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Literarion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literarion/gifts).



> **Crowley: I’m not lying. The boy, wherever he is, has the dog. He's named it. It's done. He’s coming into his power... We’re doomed.**
> 
> **_Aziraphale lifts his glass._ **
> 
> **Aziraphale: Well then. Welcome to the end times.**

Aziraphale tried to take a drink and faltered, glaring at the glass like _it_ had planned this all. Crowley sat frowning at the sour expression, filled with dread. All of their worst nightmares – _his_ worst nightmares were going to come true. There was no getting around it. There was no fixing it, no more delaying it. It was happening. The skin behind his ears and the tops of his cheeks began to burn. He couldn’t go back to Hell. The kind of things they can do to you down there just don’t bear thinking about. Being shoved in damp dark places with demons day in and day out forever and ever. He growled out loud just to break the train of thought. 

Aziraphale looked up from his drink at the sound. He stared at Crowley, but it was clear he wasn’t looking at him. He was far away, likely also thinking of going “home.” Crowley shook his head lightly. Hell wasn’t home, home was— He searched Aziraphale’s eyes, glazed and vacant. He swallowed. Home was in front of him, wasn’t it? With this angel. With the humans.

They drank together for hours. There was no laughing or reminiscing. Occasionally, Aziraphale would anxiously try to fill the silence before trailing off again. Crowley would only ever raise his eyes from the arm of the couch or a row of books to focus on the angel’s chattering, never bringing himself to respond. Mostly he kept his thoughts above the water, bobbing wildly in unyielding waves of how powerless and abandoned he was. Occasionally, his struggles failed him, plunging him below the surface into panic. It would all be gone. The beautiful humans. The world he’d wandered a stranger since its beginning. He’d go back to face eternity. His throat would clinch tight, cheeks and lungs aflame, every ounce of strength in his body keeping him from clutching at his head and screaming uncontrollably as he would in Hell. A few deep breaths and promising himself this wasn’t actually happening would let his head break the existential surf once more to hold frantically instead to simple helplessness.

  
\------  
  
  


“They don’t mean it. They can’t mean it.” Aziraphale’s voice was high and destitute.

It was a hammer finally breaking the glass encasing Crowley, keeping back the choking tide and rising sea. He turned his whole body toward him, putting his leg up on the couch. He looked as though he were trying to balance his head on his neck, rolling the connotation about in his brain. “Angel, they mean it. They’ve never meant something more.”

Aziraphale grimaced and looked away. He was silent several moments, his eyes dancing desperately around the room. “Then it’s the Great Plan. That’s obviously why our meddling hadn’t the desired outcome. We couldn’t touch Her Plan all along,” he declared hysterically before settling down to mournfully whisper, “I suppose they just have three days now.”

Thoughts spiraled in the demon’s mind, and he rested a hand on his mouth. “ _We_ just have three days now,” the final word leaving him with a pitiful sound that made his friend turn round again to look in his eyes. “I can’t imagine a way round it. Can’t think of anything. You’ll never talk to me again.” Crowley’s voice caught in his throat. “ ’ll never hear your voice again.” He searched Aziraphale’s eyes and received no response, a terrible sample of the millennia to come.

He reached out his hand and rested it lightly against Aziraphale’s cheek, brushing it with his thumb lighter than a feather. His skin was a smooth velvet like he’d always imagined it would be.

The angel’s brows furrowed painfully, and he leaned back from his companion. “Crowley.”

A strangled, frantic sound left Crowley’s lips, and he stopped further distance between them by catching him gently behind the neck. Aziraphale looked startled, but he didn’t resist his grasp.

“We both know what we’ve been through together. Tell me you aren’t terrified of spending eternity without me.”

Green eyes avoided amber ones in sorrow. “How am I supposed to go against the Great Plan? We tried that. It clearly doesn’t work, Crowley!”

“ ‘S not about the plan anymore, Angel! It's about the time we have left. I can’t– I just can’t-“ He leaned to chase and catch the angel’s bounding gaze, bringing it back around to him. “Without you, I’ll never belong again.” He leaned in slowly. He’d always imagined his heart would be pounding with nerves when he finally got the courage to do this, but now there was only soberness and sorrow. When their lips brushed slightly, he paused, feeling his friend’s breath on him, warm and quick. Would this small moment carry him through an eternity in Hell? He pressed their lips together and couldn’t keep a slight whimper from the back of his throat.

Four delicate points of pressure eased themselves onto Crowley’s cheek as Aziraphale reached for him, pressing forward to fill the space between them. With a slight tilt of the head, he ran his hand back past the demon’s ear and into his hair. In Crowley’s long life, there had never been anything more still and tender than the gentle kisses his Angel entrusted to his lips, breathing of six thousand years’ worth of longing and the inevitable endlessness apart.

Aziraphale rested their foreheads together, and Crowley managed to whisper, “Aziraphale, I-" before the angel’s mouth hurried to stop the rest of the confession from coming. He shook his head hard side-to-side in the demon’s hands, denying the words their existence. A sharp woe welled in Crowley’s throat, but amid the fever of kisses, his thumbs grew slick and wet on Aziraphale’s face. Crowley brushed his companion’s tears away, and the angel forced him back against the couch, clutching frenzied at his shoulders, tangling legs amongst legs.

A multifarious mass of emotions knotted in Crowley’s head.

The man he had loved his entire earthly life was on top of him, kissing him, grasping at his hair and clothes. His chest fluttered. He couldn’t remember having ever been _this happy_. He broke his lips away to tear a line of kisses across Aziraphale’s jaw, eliciting a groan as he sucked gently on an earlobe. His heart was trying to beat itself out of his chest. _This afraid_. Aziraphale slid his hands under Crowley’s jacket, pushing it back from his shoulders. Chunks of ice dropped in his stomach. _This destroyed_. Frantically, they pushed and pulled at articles of overclothing that bunched on the couch or crumpled unceremoniously to the floor. _This angry_.

He pulled back from the angel to look into his eyes. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and a pained wince struck Aziraphale’s face, his green eyes begging. In this moment, Aziraphale was a neglected whiskey on the rocks, the strong sting of his ever-proper airs in attendance but watered down, weary and unsound. “Crowley.” The word couldn’t have pleaded more strongly for mercy had the angel been at the end of a sword.

He knew. He knew, and he still wouldn’t hear it. A choked sound fell from Crowley’s mouth, and he cupped Aziraphale’s cheek. Another stream of tears streaked down toward the hand as he closed his eyes and leaned into the demon’s touch. Crowley’s heart lay in shreds in his rib cage. If not now, when? Never, it would seem. This would have to be enough.

When he removed his hand, Aziraphale’s eyes shot open to search for him. Crowley held his gaze firmly, untying his friend’s bowtie and unbuttoning his shirt slowly. Aziraphale’s breath became quicker and shallower as he moved down the column of buttons, but he didn’t glance away. Crowley ran his palms up smooth flesh to his chest, making him shudder beneath his hands. Their eyes never wavered.

“Crowley.” The word was different now, still and tender as his kisses had been. “Show me,” he said breathlessly.

The demon rose to meet his angel, holding his face softly with a hand and using the other to lay him back on the couch. Aziraphale reached for him, caressing his hair before beginning to unbutton his shirt as well. Crowley clutched at Aziraphale’s flesh, inscribing scripture with each grasp. He kissed him softly and sat back to let the shirt drop to the floor and run a hand up the prone man’s thigh to his groin. He bit his bottom lip, considering the bulge he found there before brushing his fingers along the angel’s erection. Aziraphale sighed heavily and reached out to touch Crowley’s wrist, deserting the hesitation almost immediately. Surrendering himself to the task, Crowley narrowed his eyes and stroked the length of the bulge again, pressing down into the hardness below his hand. A light groan this time, and Aziraphale’s head craned toward one shoulder. Long, slender fingers unfastened buttons, removing the tan trousers and the underwear below them.

He wasn’t beautiful. The word wasn’t robust enough. It didn’t contain the otherworldly awe that deafened Crowley’s ears or the fine, barbed sensation that constricted in his throat at the sight. A muted smile was failing to cover his angel’s apprehension and a devastating look of concession. In his years on Earth, Crowley had heard humans trying to imagine what it would be like to see the glory of God. Stacks of hymns had been written attempting to describe a splendor they could never have conceptualized. To be honest, they were all very close to the truth, and he’d often wondered what they would feel when they finally laid eyes on Her. Seeing Aziraphale’s supple body laid out before him, radiant and blushing, must have to come close.

A rack of small gasps stuttered out of Aziraphale as Crowley ran a finger from the base of his length to the tip, the sound rippling through his own erection. He was starved for this, aching for this. Grasping the rosy appendage, Crowley softly kissed a line to the tip, drawing a chorus of _mmm_ s. He dipped his mouth down onto the head, and the angel moaned, looking down at him with heavy lids. He took the cock deep into his mouth, suckling down onto his partner, making him writhe and grasp auburn hair in perfectly-manicured hands. His heart swelled to see so much joy. He’d always endeavored to give him small things, grand things – all things to see him happy. Not just happiness, though. _Pleasure. This was pleasure._ Hungrily, he moaned against the flesh in his mouth, swirling his tongue and bobbing his head to work the shaft, tasting skin and salt.

The fevered weight of Aziraphale’s cock on his tongue devilled Crowley onward. He ached to have the divine being in every way, make up for all these wasted years and those to come, love him with his body and whatever soul remained. He hollowed his cheeks around the firm fullness in his mouth, rolling his eyes upward to watch the angel squirming back against the arm of the couch. With one slicked finger, he found Aziraphale’s opening, tracing soft circles around the ring. The soft warm body tensed below him uncertainly, but cautiously settled as Crowley hummed encouragement through his body. One finger slipped inside to a small cry, tight and warm as he worked to ease the hollow. He swallowed down on the angel’s cock once more before slowly drawing his lips off, taking it to stroke in hand instead.

The consecrated image of blond hair twined round snow white fingers was worth the notable absence in his throat. He applied a second finger to his ministrations and Aziraphale began to call out in earnest. Small shudders of ‘please’ and ‘yes’ melted and mixed with groans. Crowley bit his lower lip, watching this man he’d dreamed of writhe under his fingers. Small fractures formed in his ribs from containing the torrent of acuminous emotion and lust. Aziraphale’s cries beneath the demon’s hands were like a chorus of hymns, spilling out to the open air like worship. He wanted to be inside him, to move within him like the Spirit of the Lord.

Slender digits slowed their stroking and carefully withdrew from their shelter. Aziraphale looked up at him, fathomless pools of sorrow and longing and unspoken sentiment glistening. Crowley lowered himself to meet his lover, blinking slowly, intentionally, to return as much affection as he could. He put a hand gently to the side of his head, running a thumb along his ear, imploring him to listen to everything his heart was saying. Brow knit tightly, he searched the angel’s face and leaned down to meet their lips. Aziraphale returned the gesture eagerly.

Crowley brought his rigid cock to tease the hole he’d been minding. Quick bursts of breath began to fall on his upper lip as they kissed, fearful but yearning. The world around them – the people moving on with their lives, unaware of their impending doom and the ceaseless hum of the cosmic authority that enslaved them – all silenced and became still. He softly pressed himself into the angel, who barked out a starved, “Ahh!”. Crowley’s breath splintered from his body in a sharp series of huffs as he settled down to his hilt into the hot, tense canal that enveloped him.

“I’ve- ‘ve wanted..” his voice escaped, threadbare and broken, lost to the remarkable sensation.

Aziraphale’s hands found his hips, encouraging them to rock, ripping a gasp from Crowley’s chest. He withdrew slowly and deliberately sank back down again. The angel groaned loudly below him, mouth open to the heavens. He kissed his lower lip as he shouted, calling out to the one that was forsaking them, denying them this thing they’d only just found. Crowley pinned Aziraphale’s arms to his side in a tight embrace, holding him closely as he thrust into him over and over, basking in the intense serenade. The feeling was indescribable, and Crowley did everything he could to drink in each acute sensation – the humid tackiness of their skin pressed close together, the stinging of sweat in new open scrapes on his back, the slick constriction of Aziraphale’s ass swallowing his erection.

“Crowley…” he heard his name roll sultry from his partner’s mouth like it was the only way it was ever made to be heard, the only way those lips were ever meant to speak it. He raised himself to put hands on the angel’s chest.

“Sssay it again, Aziraphale.”

“C-Crowley!” he moaned, more insistently this time with the demon’s eyes on him.

The sound of his name – _his name_ – tripping so obscenely off that pure tongue swelled brutally in his groin. Repetitions of it comingled with pleas and blasphemy and coiled headily around him like smoke. A song waiting for voice since Creation itself. It was beauty, an anguish he couldn’t contain. He reached down to take Aziraphale’s cock in his hand, stroking it hard in time to his lunging. Aching desire and love and sorrow and terror bled together, seeping from every cell in Crowley’s body.

“Aah, Aa-ziraphale, l-look at me.” He gasped.

Muddled with lust and satisfaction and shame, the angelic eyes looked toward the heavens and found Crowley. 

“Ah! I- I—“ It was too much, and it would never, ever be enough. Unbearable, agonizing bliss and frustration met, wed, and died deep in his stomach, resonating down through his cock. “Fff— _fuck_ , ah. Aaah, hhh-- _fuck_.” The demon’s hips skipped forward recklessly, pounding into Aziraphale, emptying his seed deep into him. 

“ _Yes_ , oh my God, oh Crowley. Yes. _Please._ ” Aziraphale begged below him, hearing the crude recitation of the orgasm that filled him. Hands dug deeply into the demon’s sides that would doubtless ripen to bruises. Warm stripes drizzled their bodies as he came to Crowley’s stroking, yanking his head down to invade his mouth with his tongue, groaning into passionate kisses as he shuddered under his hand. 

Several moments passed, the pair frozen in place, panting and shivering, the drunkenness of lust passing soberly into the reality of the situation. The mood shifted in the room as tangibly as a closing door. Crowley sat back and closed his mouth against his heavy breathing. In front of him, a wounded animal calculating the best moment to bolt. He rubbed his face with his hand and croaked out a few syllables, halted again by a harsh, “ _Crowley._ ”

Eyes wide in disbelief, the skittish creature tucked his knees together and shifted back away from him on the sofa to sit up a bit. It appeared he wasn’t coping well with his actions, his own spend in attendance across his abdomen. A shadow of horror crossed the angel’s face, a pang stabbing at Crowley’s viscera as he realized it was a look of revulsion at what he’d allowed himself to do.

“Nng,” Crowley wavered, sliding closer, putting his hand on Aziraphale’s knee, shaking his head side-to-side almost imperceptibly. “Hey, you don’t – It’s. We don’t have to…” None of the words were right. He swallowed hard. “I’m not coming back out of this one, not when Hell catches up to what I’ve done.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “If my side found out about any of this.. Well, they can’t. They _simply can’t._ We know where we belong, and we’re going to _stay_ there.” The knee leapt away from Crowley’s touch. 

_Shit. **Shit.** Nonono, please no._ “No need to be drastic. I mean. So little time left. After 6000 years, it should be together, right? However you need it to be, eh. As friends, yeah?”

“Friends!?” Aziraphale retorted incredulously, the absurdity of the statement punctuated by their sticky, naked bodies. The demon let the heavy silence hang between them, gifting him occasion to weigh the magnitude of his priorities.

Sheepish, defiant, panicked eyes twitched back toward him. “Perhaps,” Aziraphale conceded sharply.

Crowley shifted nervously, and made a soft snarl, waving his hand to restore their clothes. They sat awkwardly shoulder-to-shoulder, ludicrously chaste.

“Let me stay?” He didn’t turn his head.

Aziraphale looked away with an irritated noise.

Crowley watched the shelves intensely, making sure none of the books developed sentience and attempted to escape from contact heartache.

“I don’t want to leave.”

Aziraphale stayed quiet, fidgeting with distress.

“It’ll all be over. Gone. Melted with righteous and unrighteous fire. All we’ve got.” Crowley’s voice came out shaky and weak. He looked tired and afraid and decidedly uncool.

“There has to be something else we can do!” Aziraphale finally responded in a panicked voice. “Something we can say. Some way to make it all better again. I just have to – to speak with someone. I can go to the Head Office, Lord knows they can’t _want_ a war.” He looked around desperately at the room around him. “We can stay here, where we belong. Doing the jobs we were put here to do.” He stood to pull away from the demon. “If we set it right again, we can stay... Here.”

Crowley had never felt such a tearing feeling in his body, and the pain was unbearable. There was a rushing din in his ears, and his chest burned. He had the vague and fleeting thought that this must be what dying feels like. Tears were pouring from his eyes, rolling down his face. How didn’t Aziraphale see? There was no one there to listen to them. The world would end in three days, and he wouldn’t even have the relief of ceasing to exist afterward. He would have to live an eternity without ever seeing him again, and somehow now that was starting today. A briny blur prevented his sight, but he slid from the couch, broken, onto his knees and grabbed weakly at his new lover’s hands.

“Let us have three more days together, please God.” His wet face glistened upward, and he was not begging Aziraphale anymore. She couldn’t take that from them.

Aziraphale pulled his hands out from the demon’s clutches and backed away from him in embarrassment and shame. Tears welled in his eyes, but he wasn’t letting them fall. “Crowley,” came an almost inaudible whisper, “pull yourself together. This is _not_ the time to fall apart. We need to _think_.”

The door to the shop rattled against its lock — of course this had to be one of the two or three hours a week Aziraphale allowed people to wander around his damned collection — and the angel glanced back on instinct, slipping absently into the comfort of something familiar and routine. The farce must make him feel normal, the demon thought. Some small measure of control that he himself didn’t have.

Crowley rubbed his face with his now-empty hands. He could run away now – work some sort of fiendish wiles to take the angel away and hide them until the seas of blood rose to drown them. The spiral of thoughts was exhausting against the muffled but ever-present, irrational belief that he could have always found a way out of this. No. If it was going to happen — and it was — he was going to have to keep Aziraphale on the angel’s own terms for as long as they had. We. _We_ have to think, he had said. Thinking could happen until the end of time, if _we_ could do it. He sat back on his heels, there on the bookshop floor.

“Think.” A sound produced from sandpaper on vocal cords. “Yeah.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat loudly in suggestive composure, flashing his eyes modestly away from the fractured man on the floor, rolling them upward to force the tears back into his head. He didn’t look back, heading from the back room to open the shop and greet the waiting patron, encouraging them to look around and _do_ let him know if they needed anything at all.

He made his way back to Crowley, standing just inside the door. Enough strength had possessed the demon to shakily crawl back onto the couch. He sat dissociating under the angel’s gaze, face splotchy but steady. The soft sound of shuffling books and turning pages drifted back toward them for an untold amount of time, the humans on the other side of the fragile wall of cellulose and glue that held together their considerable yet woefully minuscule understanding of existence.

“Wouldn’t it be _lovely_ ,” Aziraphale said in a dream, his voice very far away from Crowley and himself and the room they were in, “if we didn’t have to be on one side or the other? We could just be on our side, you know?”

Crowley scoffed. “Like the humans are, yeah? They got it right, better than either of ours. They’re the ones with the real good and evil. Only redeemable ones of the lot of us.”

“You’re so nice when you speak of them. It’s always been so peculiar to me for a demon to be such a nice person. You can’t. Predestination or something.” He turned to face him with a curious expression. “Though I don’t know why I should think it _too_ peculiar. You are one of God’s creatures after all, demon or not.”

Gears stripped in Crowley’s heart, unable to shift emotion in any direction whatsoever, neither toward rage nor additional weeping. He felt bitter and exposed and raw. God’s creature, yet still repugnant. Still _predestined_. There had to be something glass-half-full here. Anything. Literally anything. Details of his near future floated in the ocean of his dismay, Crowley grasping at them for purchase.

“If we lose, suppose they’ll kill us all? Or, ah, maybe they might take some prisoners?” Hope, in its own sick way, but hope nonetheless.

Aziraphale’s head shot up, eyes daggers. “ _Get out,_ ” a boiling hiss erupted from his lips, spittle scattering in the force of his words.

Defensive, reassuring hands shot up in front of Crowley. “Angel please, I—"

“Crowley,” Aziraphale growled and pulled him forcefully from the couch by his coat, shoving him toward the back of the shop. “Someone is here.” Higher pitched. “There may be time yet, but they _must_ not find out we’ve been...” Words stumbled, regardless of their need for urgency, “We’ve been _working together!_ ”

Eyes wide, Crowley nodded, grabbing to squeeze Aziraphale’s forearm despite himself. No time to think or say goodbye, he turned to dash into the alley behind the shop. Sidling up to peek onto the street, an odd feeling of déjà vu swam through his consciousness. Gabriel and Sandalphon strolled toward the only thing worth protecting, and anger bubbled to the surface. Timing was paramount here. On a slow count of ten, he rolled out toward the Bentley as casually as he could, not daring to look back at the shop. Sandalphon had quite the distaste for people that risked a glance back at looming devastation.

\-----

Thoughts would have raced through his head had it not been filled with the persistent buzzing of disengagement. It was easier to let the static engulf him than fight the bile that rose in his throat at the thought of their predicament. It threatened every few minutes or so, burning at his brain and squeezing his neck, but he managed more and more easily to shove it back down into that all-consuming hum.

Sterile and frigid was the theme of the rest of the morning. He wandered aimlessly in the unwelcoming flat he pretended was his home, waiting for a call that kept not coming. Sitting was out of the question. Gentle strides through the cold rooms devolved into pacing. They could have seen him leaving. They could be dragging Aziraphale to Heaven in golden manacles as he stalked impotently here through the sparsely populated rooms. For what felt like the hundredth time, he pushed his way into the office and reached for the phone before snarling and stopping himself again.

Television. That would be distracting. He waved his hand, and the screen sprang to life.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron, which speaks of devastation at the hands of those with zeal for God.
> 
> ...And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,  
> And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;  
> And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,  
> Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!


End file.
